Passing the Gun
by fugitive motel
Summary: In some dark corner of their minds they always knew that they were long overdue for disaster.
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: This fic takes place in an alternate first season. Dean and Sam have been hunting together for about a year and are still searching for John. Subsequent chapters will be a LOT longer than this one, which is essentially just a prologue. I'm new to writing fanfiction, so please help me out by dropping some reviews!_

_Despite the initial evidence to the contrary, Passing the Gun is mostly Dean centered; however, if you are more of a Sam person, don't worry, because he still gets his fair share of attention. _

**1.**

The hunt should have been routine. Looking back on it, Sam is always appalled by how normal that afternoon was, how neither of them even paused to think that maybe _this_ night, of all nights, would be the one where everything finally fell apart. In some dark corner of their minds they always knew that they were long overdue for disaster; but those fears rode backseat, and they seemed trivial on that warm, sun-drenched evening, with the windows down, the crisp, elusive smell of almost-autumn in the air, the Impala speeding through fields of browning corn. Sam had his head tipped toward the window, and Dean glanced at him occasionally and thought about how young he looked, and about how much he needed to get a haircut if he was ever going to pick up chicks again, _ever_. Sam just thought about Jessica, and how much she'd loved this time of year.

Clouds piled up on the horizon, towering and white, their underbellies bruise-dark. They chased the Impala into town.

Six hours and forty-two minutes later, Sam is kicking down the door of an abandoned warehouse. The rotten wood parts like butter but _it still isn't fast enough_, and as he hurtles into the vast empty building, through the dank, narrow hallway reeking of mold, he's asking himself why the hell he and Dean always split up when things get seriously dangerous. It's like, hey, there's a ghost ripping out people's entrails and flinging them around like party streamers, why don't I take the downstairs and you take the upstairs? Great idea! _Always_.

It was only a matter of time until that plan backfired, and tonight it has in a potentially fatal way. Sam's finally traced the little girl – Sarah Phelps, missing for twenty-four hours, blonde, pigtails – to this warehouse, and he's got the feeling that Dean's here too, a hunch he confirms mere seconds later when he skids around a corner and almost trips over a beheaded corpse. Yeah, definitely Dean's work. He steps over the mess, careful not to slip in the blood pooling dark on the concrete, and draws the Beretta from where it's tucked between his belt and his skin. A doorway looms at the end of the hallway, identifiable only as a square of greater darkness against the shadows.

Sam thinks he hears a quiet scuffle; it's followed by a muffled, unintelligible sound that he instantly recognizes: Dean trying to speak through a gag.

When he reaches it he slows down, presses his back against the wall, and looks cautiously around the corner. He has failed to understand his brother's warning. Something else rises to meet him, so fast that he only catches an ephemeral glimpse of light winking off metal before it slams into his head and that streak of silver transforms into pain knifing through his skull, blindingly bright, a searing comet-streak of agony that accompanies him down into darkness like a meteor descending to earth. A distant impact, deceptively silent. Everything fades.


	2. Chapter 2

**2.**

Sam comes to slowly, and for a moment he doesn't realize where he is. Maybe he's back in college, he's partied too hard last night, which would explain the dry stuffed-cotton taste in his mouth and the splitting ache that throbs through his temples to the rhythm of his heartbeat. Then he remembers. Sarah, vampires. A nest. Dean.

He's already sitting up. The concrete is cold and uncomfortably gritty beneath his jeans; his hands are tied behind a rusty floor-to-ceiling pipe. The back of his jacket is soaked. The pipe is perspiring, collecting moisture from the cold rain outside and sweating chilly beads of condensation. He guesses by the single bar of watery cloud-obscured moonlight filtering into the room (there's got to be window up there somewhere, but he can't see it) that it's past midnight. He's been unconscious for at least two hours.

"Dean?" he says hoarsely, and something shifts in response to the sound of his voice, a quiet, furtive sound like windblown leaves scraping across pavement. Sam swallows. He waits, but that's the only answer he gets.

He starts to work at the twine around his wrists. Whoever's tied him up has done a good job, but Sam is resourceful, and he squirms himself free in a matter of minutes, gritting his teeth as he scrapes his skin raw. He stands. The shadows around him sway for a moment, so he grips the pipe for support until things get steady again and then turns around to survey the rest of the room, suppressing a cold clench of apprehension.

Sarah Phelps is looking up at him with huge blue eyes, one of her pigtails undone. Her dress is caked with blood. She isn't wearing any shoes.

"Sarah," Sam says quietly, as gently as he can. The girl looks seriously traumatized. "Don't worry, I'm here to take you back to your parents."

She sniffs.

"Have you – have you seen the people who kidnapped you? Are they still here?" Despite himself, Sam allows a note of urgency to enter his voice; he's still casting around in the shadows, but most of the room is too dark to make out. It looks small, at least, and cluttered. A boiler room. They're probably in the basement, which would explain why the window – he can see it now, a tiny, grimy square of light – is set so high up on the wall.

Where the hell is Dean?

"No," Sarah replies, with that kind of thin, stuffy-nosed pitch that indicates she's been crying. "I'm thirsty. He went to get me a drink."

Sam hesitates, glances at her.

His eyes are beginning to adjust to the gloom, and he detects a round lump on the floor just beyond Sarah's huddled body, a pale smear surrounded by a darker tangle. He squints, it slowly swims into focus, and Sam isn't surprised to discover that it's a decapitated head. It belongs to a woman. She stares back at him blindly from beneath swollen, half-lowered eyelids, pupils as black and glassy as beetle wings.

Sarah notices where he's looking and volunteers, "She hasn't got her head anymore. There's only one left."

"Uh," Sam says, slightly taken aback. "Thanks." He kneels down to untie her hands, and she turns her head to watch him, her pigtail flipping over her shoulder.

"Or two," she adds, in a piping, unconcerned voice, and sinks her vampire teeth into his shoulder.

Later, Sam only feels regret when he's already brought his elbow down on Sarah's head hard enough to knock her out, and he's looking at her tiny supine form, her dirty dress, and realizes for the first time that she's barefoot. He can't bring himself to finish her off. Trying not to be sick, he steps around her and ventures deeper into the room, keeping his back to the light from the window so it won't mess with his vision.

He finds the Beretta on the ground a few feet away, and tucks it back into the seat of his pants.

When he sees something slumped over in the corner next to a water heater, he instantly knows that it's Dean and he practically dives the last few steps to his brother and grips the shoulder of that beat-up leather jacket Dean is always wearing and peers closely into his face, his eyebrows drawn together, his forehead wrinkling with earnest concern. "You have such a huge, wrinkly forehead," Dean had said to him once, before his high school prom, appraising him from across the room with that infuriating air of amused, swaggering superiority, and that's why Sam has taken to wearing such shaggy bangs ever since.

"Dean," he says, in a hoarse whisper. "Dean, come on, man, wake up. Wake up, Dean." He gives his brother's shoulder a little shake, but he doesn't jostle him too hard, because he looks really, seriously bad. Sam tries not to panic. Dean is pale to the point of scary; a livid bruise curves under one of his eyes, and half of his face is caked with blood, and Sam can't tell whether he's breathing – Christ, he starts to think, is Dean – is he –

"Sammy," Dean croaks, and the blood rushes back to Sam's head. A smile twitches across his lips, quick and absent, before he can stop it. That's the way Dean says his name when he's more worried about Sam than he is himself, when he's about to call Sam out for doing something retarded, and sure enough:

"A _gun_, Sam? Seriously?"

Sam snorts a hurried laugh and levers Dean away from the wall with his shoulder, trying to get at his brother's hands. Dean attempts to stifle the quiet noise he makes, but Sam hears it anyway and scrambles for a reply, knowing that he hates vulnerable silences.

"Swinging a machete around in a pitch black room isn't exactly my idea of fun," Sam says finally, working blindly at the knot around Dean's wrists. Jesus, he's cold. "I'd like to see you try it."

"Already have."

Oh, yeah.

"Worked out freakin' great," Dean qualifies, but his voice is too tense, gruff with pain, and Sam fumbles the last of the twine loose and sits back on his heels, trying to figure out the fastest way to get his brother out of there and to a hospital.

Dean isn't looking at him; the side of his forehead is hitched up against the dirty curve of the water heater as if the pressure's holding him together, but at least his eyes are partially open, bloodshot and weirdly unfocused. A muscle flickers in his cheek.

"Plus, I coated the bullets with dead man's blood," Sam says, and Dean presses his eyes closed again, relieved. Sam is unsettled by the depth of feeling in that gesture and decides not to comment. "Think you can stand?"

"Sam," Dean begins, but something distracts him and he lifts his head, stares past Sam into the darkness with that disgruntled look of disbelief he gets whenever he catches sight of the thing they're hunting and realizes that it's _really_ ugly.

Sam takes the hint and turns around, leveling his gun. A man – a vampire – steps into the feeble beam of moonlight and glares, peeling his lips back from his second set of teeth like a shark. Sam shoots him. The vampire looks down at the bullet hole in his stained shirt, returns his attention to Sam. He gives him a withering stare that gradually transforms into a look of bewildered surprise, and then he collapses, clutching his stomach. It doesn't take him long to stop moving.

"_So_ much easier than a machete," Sam says, glancing back at Dean, who's struggling to his feet. Sam lunges to help him, but his brother waves him off and Sam is almost glad, because when Dean gets to the point where he's hurt enough to accept Sam's help without protesting, it's serious.

"And so much wussier." Dean winces, leans on the water heater for a moment, and then gingerly takes a few steps and bends down to pick something up. He moves with the geriatric slowness of a man three times his age.

"Dude, guns aren't wussy. How can you even say that guns are wussy?"

Dean half-straightens, one hand resting heavily on his thigh. He wordlessly brandishes the machete. Sam looks down at the Beretta and is forced to concede his brother's point.

"Sarah?" Dean asks, stepping around the little girl's unconscious body. Sam shakes his head. Anyone else would have missed the look that passes across Dean's face – the hardening of his jaw, the way his eyes momentarily go cold and distant – but Sam knows that expression, and he isn't fooled when Dean gives a perfunctory, dismissive sniff and shrugs his coat more comfortably about his shoulders, a tough-guy gesture that Sam only sees him perform when he's trying to recover his dignity, or when he's steeling himself to do something he's really going to hate himself for afterwards.

"Maybe," Sam begins, and hesitates. Dean shoots him a look.

"Maybe what? She's a vampire, Sam. She's not a kid anymore. Christ, we're doing her a favor."

For once, Sam finds himself unable to argue. He forces himself not to look away when Dean raises the machete high and brings it down again, severing Sarah's head from her shoulders. Sam feels useless and too tall, an obstacle, as his brother skirts around him on his way to the next vampire. Rinse and repeat.

This time, it isn't so easy for Dean to lift himself back up. He has his face turned away, but Sam still sees, in profile, the pain that's twisting across his features like a grimace of loathing. After a second Dean grunts and almost doubles over, but Sam is there in an instant with a hand under his arm, holding him upright.

"Easy, Lassie," Dean grits out, letting Sam support him. Sam gets the uncomfortable feeling that Dean wants to push him off but doesn't have the energy as they shuffle awkwardly toward the stairs. Dean is solidly built, heavy, but Sam is a lot stronger than his gangly frame suggests, and they make it to the ground floor without incident. Dean remains silent the whole time, avoiding Sam's gaze.

A nameless feeling of disquiet has been rising in the pit of Sam's stomach ever since he found Dean passed out in the corner and he's doing his best to ignore it, because he doesn't want to explore what it means.

It reminds him of something: Dean dropping him off at the bus the day he left for college, helping him haul his duffels out of the Impala's backseat. Dean hides his feelings by acting like more of a douchebag than usual, Sam has always known this, but that day he didn't joke around any more than he normally did. He didn't make fun of Sam's hair, his height, his taste in music. Occasionally Sam had caught him opening his mouth, only to shut it again, at a loss, his eyebrows furrowed and his mouth set in a grim line.

When they'd parted, Dean had just thumped him on the shoulder and watched him climb onto the bus; then he'd turned away and the last Sam had seen of him out the window was his retreating back as he walked toward the Impala, his aggressive, confident gait, the battered brown of his leather jacket.

Sam doesn't know why (or shit, maybe he already does), but now, as then, it feels like the tense moments of forced normality before a goodbye.

Dean suddenly disentangles himself and pushes Sam away as they reach the door. Sam turns around, startled, but Dean has let his shoulder thump against the rotting frame and is leaning on it heavily, his gaze cast down toward the ground, and he won't meet Sam's eyes.

"Dean–"

"You're not stupid, Sammy," Dean says, producing the words with effort. They come out harsh. "Don't pretend to be stupid."

"I don't," Sam begins, but he cuts himself off, because he does know, he has ever since he untied Dean's wrists, he's just been telling himself otherwise, making himself _believe_ otherwise. He revises his statement: "I _can't_. Dean, you know I can't do that—"

"I just wanted to make sure you got out safe, that's all," Dean says, and Sam can tell that he's clenching and unclenching his jaw, trying to form words that don't come easily to him. This is as close as he can get to admitting, _I couldn't tell you_. "I mean, seriously, this place was built in the 1800s. People didn't grow into freakin' giants like you back then. You could've clotheslined yourself on half the doors."

Sam takes a step forward, about to protest, but Dean shoots him such a weird bloodshot stare that he actually stumbles backward, his words dying on his tongue. Dean's mouth twists, wryly, and somehow it's the bleakest expression Sam's ever seen him give.

The twin beams of distant car headlights track across the complex, reflect from the windows in a brief, chasing flash of light. Dean grunts and looks away.

"I can't do this, man," he goes on roughly. "I can't—we can't stand here forever, pretending that everything's going to be goddamn fine, because it's… it's messed up, Sam. It's really messed up. You don't know how hard—" Dean shakes his head, and Sam realizes that his hands are trembling. "I can _hear your heartbeat_. I want to—"

"Christ!" Sam says, horrified. "I'm not going to kill you!"

For a second Sam thinks Dean might yell at him, but instead his voice comes out tense, quiet. "It's your job. Do it."

"But you're still… hell, Dean, you're still yourself. You're not a monster. Or—I don't know, if you are, you're still my _brother_. I can't."

Dean sends him a look of such concentrated, defensive misery that Sam automatically steps forward and puts his arms around him, tucks his chin against his brother's hair, and holds him tight. He doesn't let go when Dean tries to push him away, or when he feels him sink his fangs into his shoulder a moment later, a renewed splitting pain right where Sarah has already sunk hers.

Sam is holding the Beretta. He presses the barrel against his brother's ribs and shoots him.

Nothing happens for a second or two, but then Dean's grip slackens and Sam helps him to the ground, leans him up against the doorframe. Dean blinks, frowns, touches the bullet wound, which seems to bewilder him more than anything. Then he squints up at Sam. He's having trouble focusing.

"I bit you," he says, uncertainly, seeking confirmation.

"Yeah," Sam admits, and for some reason he laughs, a harsh, surprising sound through his tears. "I'm never gonna let you live it down, either."

"Jesus, Sammy, I bit you." Dean swipes at the blood smeared around his mouth with his sleeve, clumsy and uncoordinated. His eyelashes flutter. Sam hopes he isn't in too much pain. He doesn't seem to be, but with Dean, you never know for sure.

"And I shot you," Sam counters, bracing Dean's arm when his brother suddenly sags to the side. He feels a splinter of pain drive up through his injured shoulder, but it isn't that bad, he tells himself, it really isn't.

Dean's head lolls against Sam, but he's too obstinate to stop fighting the poison. His throat works. "Thanks," he finally manages to slur, and then he's a dead weight.

"It was the only way to get you home, you stubborn asshole," Sam says, because he knows Dean can't hear him anymore, and he stares at his brother's pale face for the better part of a minute before he finally rouses himself and wrestles Dean's limp body over his good shoulder. He doesn't know what he's going to do.

What the hell is he going to do?

The first thing he does is leaves the machete behind on the ground, gleaming with blood, abandoned in the empty doorway.


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: I have never been to Coalmont, Tennessee, so I apologize in advance if I get anything horribly wrong (and yes, Joe's Meats is an entirely fictional location). Thanks for reading, I hope you're enjoying the fic so far, and even if you aren't, I welcome feedback of all kinds.

**3.**

Dean wakes up in a shabby motel bathroom. He's sprawled in the bathtub, his head pillowed on one of Sam's jackets. The blinds are drawn but the thin stripes of light leaking in between the slats still sear his eyes, blind him with their yellow-white haze. Once when he was in fifth grade he had such a bad fever that he couldn't sleep for two nights straight, and this almost felt like that: confused and in pain, but the confusion was worse, stumbling around unable to see straight or think straight, his head locked in a miserable cotton vice.

He knows, though, that he's hungry—starving.

The need hits him so hard that he groans, a deep, strangled pain-noise that forces out from between his clenched teeth, and he doesn't recognize he's the one making it.

The door opens and Sam leans over the tub, a looming shadow, his face anxious. "I'm sorry, Dean," he keeps repeating, and Dean doesn't know why, he still doesn't understand why Sam is sorry even when his brother empties a syringe into his arm and everything fades again.

The next time Dean opens his eyes, it's dark outside. The bathroom is draped in bluish shadows. He stares at the water stains lining the tub's interior, pretty sure he shouldn't be able to see them. He stands up, gripping the wall for support, and looks at the discolorations on the linoleum floor, the scum embedded between the shower tiles. A toothbrush on the sink, a pale scum of watery toothpaste ringing its bristles, captures his attention for several long seconds. Everything looks dirtier than he remembers, the grime standing out in stark relief. He wants something. He isn't sure what it is.

He's dizzy, so it takes him a while to stumble over to the light switch and flick it on. He flicks it back off almost instantly, holding a hand to his head, and finally remembers what's going on. The memories come back to him indistinct and disturbing, like images left over from a really bad dream. He isn't entirely sure they're real.

What the hell was Sam thinking?

He moves to the sink and braces his hands on the edges, accidentally knocking over a plastic cup in the process. It clatters to the floor, and the sound of its hollow, echoing impact is far too loud. Dean winces. Then he puts his face close to the mirror, tilts his jaw toward it. As he's pushing up his lip to check his teeth he notices that the blood is gone; Sam has cleaned him up.

He thinks this realization should make him feel something, but he can't concentrate, so instead he focuses on his gums, on the small lumps embedded in between each tooth like blisters. He wouldn't notice them if he didn't already know what he was looking for. He presses one and a sharp, gleaming canine slides out like a claw from a cat's toe. He draws his hand back fast.

He decides that he needs to get out of the bathroom.

The doorknob won't turn, so Dean moves over to the window, gripping the sink, the towel bar, the back of the toilet for support. He parts the blinds' slats and looks through at the dark parking lot outside. The motel's red neon sign is surrounded by a hazy nimbus of pink light, and Dean thinks he can hear it buzzing, a taut electrical whine, from across the lot and through the wall. He looks away.

He needs to get out.

He really needs to get out.

That's when he hears Sam say his name from the other side of the door.

For a while it seemed like the storms that rolled in last night were going to break up, but now it's starting to drizzle, gray rain spattering and smearing across the Impala's windshield, and Sam watches a low ceiling of clouds march the last of the sunlight away toward the horizon. His grip is tight on the wheel. Occasionally he glances at the coat he's tossed over the backseat to hide the blood on the leather, wondering if Dean will be pissed at him for not cleaning it up. _Hoping_ he will be.

Sam has spent most of the day doing research on his laptop, jumping at every tiny noise from the bathroom, and he's coming to the reluctant conclusion that searching for a cure for vampirism is a waste of time. It isn't in his nature to surrender, but the serious lore he's managed to excavate from the endless pages of Buffy and Anne Rice fan websites is frustratingly unhelpful, and figuring out stuff like this is what he's really _good_ at, so when he doesn't even have even one credible lead to follow up on he knows it's likely to be a lost cause. He won't stop looking, but some unconscious part of him has already given up.

Later, he might trace the exact moment it happened to when he minimized those pages, opened up a Google search, and typed in "Coalmont TN butcher."

Another car's approaching headlights startle Sam back into the present. He turns on the wipers, because for a second the light skating over the windshield makes the droplets of rain sparkle as bright as diamonds and he can't see the road ahead of him. The car passes.

Sam runs a hand through his hair, wishing John would answer the vague, miserable message he left on his answering machine a few hours earlier. He can't think of a time when he and Dean needed their dad more than now, but the bastard's still missing, communicating with them once or twice a month in the form of cryptic text messages and coordinates left tacked to the walls of vacated motel rooms. Sam hates him. He misses him.

God, he misses his dad so much.

He hasn't slept in almost two days, not counting his brief foray into unconsciousness in the warehouse's basement, and the lack of sleep is really getting to him. He almost misses the turn, which is kind of incredible considering how small Coalmont is—so small that he isn't sure whether he should be relieved or concerned that they actually do have a butcher shop, a place called Joe's Meats. The name is a little too frank for Sam's comfort.

The injured reprimand he's automatically expecting for turning the wheel too sharply, skidding the car around the corner and onto the gravel drive, never comes. It's quiet. Rain patters against the roof. Sam parks and eyes the sketchy-looking brick building through the smeary windshield, imagining the kinds of horrors that only hunters can.

As it turns out, buying blood is pretty easy. Sam expects the teenager behind the counter (who is neither threateningly large nor missing any fingers) to be suspicious, but the kid just shrugs and goes through a swinging door and comes back with a plastic two liter thermos. He dumps it on the formica, looking like he hates his life.

Right now, Sam can sympathize.

He pays in cash, forcing himself to stop glancing at the clock on the wall when he realizes that the kid's staring at him, unamused, chewing a wad of gum in the supremely jaded way that only teenagers seem to be able to manage. The weather outside makes it hard to tell what time it is, and Sam wants to get back to the motel before sunset if he can.

"Thanks," he says, and the kid unenthusiastically mumbles something about Joe's Meats and come back again, in a manner that suggests he kind of hopes that Sam won't.

Judging by how murky the clouds have gotten, it's just past dark by the time Sam turns the key in the lock and pushes open the door, and as he's walking inside he's positive he hears a sound from the bathroom. He pauses in the middle of shucking off his coat and carefully sets down the grocery bag on one of the beds. The thin plastic hasn't finished deflating onto the ugly taupe coverlet by the time he reaches the bathroom door. "Dean?" he asks. He doesn't receive an answer. He waits, feeling sick. He presses his forehead against the wood.

He knows that Dean is awake, that he's in there, but he still doesn't know exactly who he's going to see on the other side.

Finally, he hears denim shift against ceramic. "Sam," Dean says. "Jesus."

"You got it right the first time," Sam replies, weak with relief. Dean sounds hoarse and uncertain, but he sounds more or less like himself. "I'm gonna let you out, okay?"

"No. Shit, Sammy, no." Dean's voice is forced, and there's an undercurrent of tense desperation to it that has Sam pausing with his hand on the chair that's been shoved under the doorknob. He realizes that his brother wants to be let out, that he's fighting it, and for a moment Sam becomes acutely aware of the chilly autumn air still clinging to him from outside. He wonders if that's how Dean feels now, permanently.

"I've been dosing you with dead man's blood," Sam says, and the guilt that seeps into his voice is apparent even to him. "If I have to, I'll do it again."

Dean doesn't say anything. Sam waits for a couple more seconds, just in case, before he finishes shifting the chair out of the way. He opens the door. It's dark inside the bathroom, and the light of the single lamp Sam has turned on in the other room barely penetrates, but Dean grunts and angles his head away as if someone's shone a flashlight into his eyes. He's sitting on the edge of the tub, his hands gripping the enamel on either side of him so hard that his knuckles have turned white. Sam can see his jaw working.

He shoots a quick glance at Sam, looks away again. Sam is startled by how bloodshot his eyes are, red-rimmed and feverish, but the adamant expression is all Dean. For his part, Dean observes that Sam is wearing his anxious golden retriever face, the one that makes him kind of retarded—cute, but retarded.

Dean will never figure out how his brother ended up with a chick as hot as Jessica. He thinks about this to distract himself from the sound of Sam's heartbeat.

"I'm a vampire," he says, when the silence has stretched on for too long.

He's hoping to shock Sam into some kind of a reaction, get rid of that worried puppy face, but it doesn't work.

Sam just goes, "Yeah," and plunks down on the toilet lid. Dean immediately wishes he hadn't. He draws in a ragged breath and grips the edge of the tub even tighter, his head bowed like he's trying not to puke. He can smell Sam, and contrary to his long-held expectations, his brother does not smell like books and sweaty socks and… whatever, pocket protectors, he smells like _blood_. He smells like food. Dean makes some kind of a noise, something deep and rough that forces itself out of his throat before he can stop it, and he's too spaced out to hear it properly but it must be pretty alarming because Sam shoots up from the toilet like something's bit him in the ass.

"Shit, Dean, I'm sorry," he says hastily, and leaves the room.

Dean has just started to relax when Sam reenters, holding something, and Dean is forced to choke down another one of those sounds. "You'd better have a damn good reason for not tying me up, Sammy," he says, his words coming out sterner and more composed than he expects them to, though he still sounds like he's forcing them up through sandpaper. Small blessings.

A hint of an unhappy smile appears on Sam's lips. "Not really."

"And for not putting me down when you had the chance."

"That one, actually, yeah," Sam says, sitting back down across from Dean, slowly this time. Dean blinks and presses his eyes shut, misery etched into his face. "If you died, who'd look after me?"

Sam knows it's wrong to play that card, to manipulate Dean that way, but he also knows that it'll work, at least temporarily, and it does. "Baby," Dean accuses, wearily and with an effort.

"Jerk."

"Bitch."

"Here, try this," Sam says, taking advantage of the brief lapse in Dean's defenses to extend the thermos toward his brother. Dean recoils.

"Dude, I'm not drinkin' that," he says, with feeling.

"It's just cow blood."

The look Dean gives Sam tells him that that doesn't help.

"Dean," Sam says, exasperated, "you eat hamburgers like, every day. This really isn't all that different. Plus, aren't you—"

He's fiddling with the thermos' lid as he speaks, and it pops open by accident, and Dean is on it before Sam can even blink.

Sam has seen Dean chug water after really long, hot, dusty hunts, but that doesn't even hold a candle to what his brother's doing now. He grips the thermos so hard it shakes, and the noises he's making are desperate and genuinely disgusting, disgusting _and_ disturbing, and that's saying something, because Dean has never been a particularly fastidious eater. Sam is just beginning to consider stopping him out of concern for his health when Dean finally lowers the thermos, two-thirds empty. It almost slips out of his hands. Sam quickly reaches over and retrieves it, and Dean, appearing not to notice, sags against the tile wall. Blood has smeared down his chin and neck and onto his shirt. It's the fangs, though, that really freak Sam out, and after a moment Dean catches him looking, comprehension dawns, and he closes his mouth and turns his face away.

"Christ, Sam," Dean says, uncomfortable. "Don't watch me."

Sam acquires a sudden, pressing interest in the designs on the linoleum floor. The silence stretches long. A dog barks from somewhere outside, a car honks, a woman's laughter rises, crescendos and fades like the call of some bizarre jungle bird. Neither of them knows how to proceed.

"You look like hell," Dean says finally, and Sam raises his head to find his brother studying him, eyes narrowed in suspicious concern.

"Look who's talking," Sam replies, but Dean has wiped the blood off his face (Sam resolutely avoids thinking about what he's done with it) and his eyes are almost normal again; they've lost that gooey red patina that made him look like a zombie extra in a B-grade horror flick. He's still a little pale, and it's hard to tell in the semi-dark, but he doesn't look that much worse than someone who's recovering from a bad flu.

"When's the last time you slept?"

"I don't know," Sam hedges. "Like, last night, maybe." He is still holding the bloody thermos, and when it occurs to him that it's about to start dripping on the floor he quickly shoves it into the sink. Gross.

Dean absently follows the motion with his eyes, gives a skeptical grunt. Sam sucks at lying.

"Dean," Sam says abruptly, and Dean's gaze shifts back to his face, and Sam almost falters, because he can tell that his brother _knows_ he's about to launch into a big, emotional rant, but he forges on anyway, because damn it, this is important. "Look, I know you still want me to, you know, but I'm not gonna do it. Dude, don't interrupt me. This goes against everything we've been taught – I realize that. I'm just thinking, what if what we've been taught is _wrong_? I was expecting you to change, and I was – I was prepared for that – " Dean raises his eyebrows " – but you haven't, at least not on the inside. You're still _you_. What I'm thinking is, maybe becoming a vampire doesn't automatically make you evil, and I think – " Sam hesitates. "Well, we hunt vampires because they kill people, right? But you don't have to kill people. I know you, Dean, and I know you wouldn't."

Dean glances away from him and runs a hand across his face, tired. He looks strangely unconvinced.

"If you can survive just as well on that," Sam continues hastily, gesturing toward the cow's blood in the sink, "I don't see why the hell we even have to consider killing you, Dean. I just – I really don't."

There are a lot of things Dean wants to say. Foremost among them are _I don't want to live like this, Sammy_, and, _What if I lose control and bite someone? Again? Like you?_ But it always seems like his most important thoughts are also the ones he can never articulate, so he just says, feeling like a jerk, "I think I need to sleep."

It's true; despite spending most of the last twenty-four hours unconscious, the blood has made him tired, bone-deep weary, and he can feel his eyes drooping closed of their own accord whenever he stops focusing on their conversation. But when Sam sits up straighter and reacquires his golden retriever face, ready to drop the issue, Dean just feels like an even bigger asshole. That's okay. It's no secret that he kind of is one.

"Right," Sam says, and then pauses, at a loss. "Uh."

"Lock me in the bathroom again," Dean prompts, "and – " he silently mimics pushing a syringe into his arm. Sam's expression grows dismayed. "Also, you probably want to refrigerate that shit. For the record, it doesn't taste anything like hamburger."

Dean pauses, taking in the look on Sam's face. "Jesus, Sam, things can't just go back to the way they were." He hesitates and improvises, hating himself, "Not yet, anyway. I'm stronger now that I've – and what if I wake up hungry? The fridge isn't gonna be my first priority."

Sam swallows. Finally he nods, weakly, and gets up and gingerly removes the blood from the sink and leaves the room. He comes back with a syringe. Then he just stands there for a second, his hair hanging down into his eyes. Suddenly it really hits Dean how tired his little brother is, how much he's gone through, shit that he's not sure he could deal with himself.

"Sammy," he says, pauses. "I'll do it, okay? Hand it over."

"Dean – "

"Seriously, it's not a problem."

Sam looks unconvinced, but he gives Dean the syringe anyway, and Dean climbs back into the tub, feeling weird and kind of awkward – because really, the arrangement makes sense, but it's embarrassing – and he gets himself situated before he rolls up his sleeve and presses the needle into a vein.

"It doesn't hurt, does it?" Sam asks, his hands shoved deep into his pockets like they're too big to fit anywhere else.

"Nope," Dean lies, and then Sam smears into a landscape of browns and tans and Dean closes his eyes, letting himself drift away.


End file.
